Authors: Karen Traviss
Halo: Glasslands (62 page)
“I’m getting him for you.”
“Okay, give me Phillips’s cam feed, too.”
Osman stood up and started doing that slow pacing—one, two, three, turn—that was as near as she came to showing agitation. An ODST or a Spartan was a known quantity in a tight spot, but not an untested civilian like Phillips.
“Worse comes to worst, ma’am, I’ll go and extract him myself,” Naomi said.
The fact that Sanghelios was effectively impenetrable wasn’t too much of a deterrent for a Spartan, but BB knew it was a stunt they could only pull once, and then the whole delicate relationship between the Arbiter, UNSC, ONI, and ‘Telcam might come unraveled in an especially ugly way. Reigniting the war right after a peace deal wasn’t quite how BB thought Osman should enter the history books.
And ‘Telcam wasn’t responding.
“That might not be an option,” Osman said. “That’s what BB’s standing by for, I’m afraid.”
“It won’t come to that, Captain,” he promised. “Although a plan B is always comforting.”
BB projected the shaky, oddly angled footage onto the battle bridge monitor and Osman watched with her arms folded tightly across her chest. The view showed a street ahead, a wide boulevard lined with trees with quite a few Sangheili milling around. It was the kind of angle beloved of TV reporters who thought that kind of camera work made their undercover stuff look edgy when they’d had gyro-mounted, self-directing minicams for centuries.
Then BB recognized one Sangheili approaching Phillips on a collision course.
“Professor,” ‘Telcam said. “You’ve put yourself at great risk.”
“I was invited by the Arbiter. Seemed difficult to refuse.”
“But why here? Where’s your pilot?”
“I left him at the inn with half the solution to an
arum.
He’s quite engrossed.”
The two of them started walking in another direction. There was an entrance ahead, a very old building that had to be the temple. Phillips walked through the gates and the camera went into sudden gloom.
“This is wonderful,” Phillips said, swallowing hard.
Keep going, Professor,
BB thought.
That’s it. Steady.
“This must date from before your first contact with the San’Shyuum.”
“Correct, Professor,” ‘Telcam said. Figures scuttled around them in the gloom. They didn’t seem to be in the building yet, just standing in the dappled shade of trees. “I’m glad you respect its antiquity and significance. Now … tell me what you know about Jul ‘Mdama.”
For a terrible moment, Phillips’s heart rate went haywire. BB confirmed that the radio unit was in close enough contact with the man’s chest to eject the needle, and hated himself for his instant efficiency.
“Should I know him?” Phillips managed at last.
The two of them were walking slowly toward the temple. BB could see the entrance, but there seemed to be some crowd movement streaming past them, not the usual audience Phillips now gathered. Something else had seized their attention.
“What’s that?” Osman asked.
Naomi didn’t blink. “I think—”
Then the cam flared, pure white, as if Phillips had turned straight into the sun and the lens was struggling for a moment, followed by a split second of silence before a dull
whoomp
registered on BB’s analytical audio as an explosion. The camera tipped: maybe Phillips had fallen or dived for cover, or perhaps ‘Telcam had pushed him to the ground.
“Christ, what’s going on?” Osman snapped. “BB, anything you can do with that image?”
“I’ll try, but—”
He could hear ‘Telcam’s voice, a little distant but definitely shaken. “It’s not us,” he said in Sangheili. “It’s not
us.
What in the name of the gods is happening?”
There was no sound from Phillips, but his heart was still pounding. That was something. Then there was another booming explosion, this time without light, and the cam feed dissolved in static. BB felt as if his arm had been torn off, a real physical pain. He thought he had no concept of himself as a corporeal entity, let alone one with limbs, until that moment.
The silence was sudden and complete. And he
hurt.
Osman reached for the comms console faster than BB imagined a human could, even a Spartan. She didn’t look at Naomi.
“Kilo-Five, this is
Port Stanley,
” she said. “Devereaux, get everyone back here right now. We’re heading back to Sanghelios immediately. Phillips is in trouble.”
And if he was, there was nothing that BB, so used to being ubiquitous and all-seeing, could now do to help him or spare him, and he couldn’t even assess the threat that faced him. He didn’t even know if his fragment was still functioning. For the first time, the AI fully understood what a terrifying, uncertain world his human colleagues had to exist in.
“Let’s move it, BB,” Osman said. “Stand by to slip.”
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Halo
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: Glasslands
by Karen Traviss
ALSO BY KAREN TRAVISS
GEARS OF WAR
Aspho Fields
Jacinto’s Remnant
Anvil Gate
Coalition’s End
WESS’HAR WARS
City of Pearl
Crossing the Line
The World Before
Matriarch
Ally
Judge
STAR WARS: REPUBLIC COMMANDO
Hard Contact
Triple Zero
True Colors
Order 66
Imperial Commando: 501st
STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE
Bloodlines
Sacrifice
Revelation
Star Wars: Clone Wars
Star Wars: No Prisoners
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
#1
New York Times
bestselling novelist, screenwriter, and comics author Karen Traviss has received critical acclaim for her award-nominated Wess’har series, as well as regularly hitting the bestseller lists with her Star Wars, Gears of War, and Halo work. She’s also lead writer on the
Gears of War
3
game. A former defense correspondent and television and newspaper journalist, she lives in Wiltshire, England.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
HALO
®
: GLASSLANDS
Copyright © 2011 by Microsoft Corporation
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Sparth
Microsoft, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox, and the Xbox logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
Edited by James Frenkel
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
e-ISBN 9781429997133
First Edition: November 2011
